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The 5 dysfunctions of a team also closely echoes Maslow's hierarchy of needs. However, I have to chime in: I don't agree with the accountability aspect. Respon

The 5 dysfunctions of a team also closely echoes Maslow's hierarchy of needs. However, I have to chime in: I don't agree with the accountability aspect. Responsibility is necessary, along with knowledge and support from the whole system: this broad "ability to be effective" makes accountability obsolete, and is superior. That combination of Knowledge, Psychology, Systems thinking, and a fourth: an understanding of variation and statistical reality -- leads to a much more complete and functional model of the organization. This is W. Edwards Deming's System of Profound Knowledge. However, you can see why "The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team" caught on, and his name didn't.

poof131 11y ago
I may be misunderstanding as I'm not familiar with your sources, but I’m not sure how you can have an effective team without accountability? If you are responsible for delivering something and you don’t and there’s never any ramification (accountability) things degenerate. I’ve seen this more than I’d like where a manager’s team is failing and he or she constantly blames subordinates and other teams for the lack of results, always ready to pull something out of the excuse matrix. When senior leaders fail to hold these managers accountable, the process continues, new mistakes, missed targets, and new scape goats found. Responsibility without accountability seems like the life of a Roman Emperor and I’ve never seen it work well with teams or leaders.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  Completely agree. The "accountability" part of 5 Dysfunctions is about the team being accountable to each other and having the ability to call each other out. It's not about checking off boxes in a spreadsheet. Think of it this way: It's about the responsibility of members of this site to downvote non-productive comments. It's not about meeting a quota of productive comments; it's about disarming non-productive action. We hold each other accountable for having productive discussion.
- nod 11y ago
  Maybe this will help: You mention "ramification"s, but I think the GP post is trying to say that if people fulfill their responsibility, then you don't need consequences - that you don't need to focus on enforcement then.
  - calinet6 11y ago
    I think that's 90% of what I'm saying. More subtly, I'm saying that focusing more on accountability than on the conditions that enable fulfilling responsibilities creates negative feedback loops from the inherently negative reinforcement of accountability. As the others have noted, accountability only exists as a means to control through fear. It only comes up in the event of failure, and is a means of personal individual punishment. For that reason, it is not conductive to improvement, nor does it effectively motivate people to actually do work better over the long term. Invariably the limiting factor that caused them to fail in the first place is not a simple lack of care or willpower: the only factors that accountability is truly suited to control. Instead, failure is most often due to a complex web of factors both internal and external to the individual—and the only way to improve is to focus on that system. Accountability instead focuses all efforts inward and tends toward ignorance of the system, which is ignorance of the truth, which is a path to more failure. In short, accountability is an unproductive concept born out of distrustful false beliefs about people. Discard it from your repertoire.

poof131 11y ago

I may be misunderstanding as I'm not familiar with your sources, but I’m not sure how you can have an effective team without accountability? If you are responsible for delivering something and you don’t and there’s never any ramification (accountability) things degenerate. I’ve seen this more than I’d like where a manager’s team is failing and he or she constantly blames subordinates and other teams for the lack of results, always ready to pull something out of the excuse matrix. When senior leaders fail to hold these managers accountable, the process continues, new mistakes, missed targets, and new scape goats found. Responsibility without accountability seems like the life of a Roman Emperor and I’ve never seen it work well with teams or leaders.

jdmichal 11y ago
Completely agree. The "accountability" part of 5 Dysfunctions is about the team being accountable to each other and having the ability to call each other out. It's not about checking off boxes in a spreadsheet. Think of it this way: It's about the responsibility of members of this site to downvote non-productive comments. It's not about meeting a quota of productive comments; it's about disarming non-productive action. We hold each other accountable for having productive discussion.
nod 11y ago
Maybe this will help: You mention "ramification"s, but I think the GP post is trying to say that if people fulfill their responsibility, then you don't need consequences - that you don't need to focus on enforcement then.
- calinet6 11y ago
  I think that's 90% of what I'm saying. More subtly, I'm saying that focusing more on accountability than on the conditions that enable fulfilling responsibilities creates negative feedback loops from the inherently negative reinforcement of accountability. As the others have noted, accountability only exists as a means to control through fear. It only comes up in the event of failure, and is a means of personal individual punishment. For that reason, it is not conductive to improvement, nor does it effectively motivate people to actually do work better over the long term. Invariably the limiting factor that caused them to fail in the first place is not a simple lack of care or willpower: the only factors that accountability is truly suited to control. Instead, failure is most often due to a complex web of factors both internal and external to the individual—and the only way to improve is to focus on that system. Accountability instead focuses all efforts inward and tends toward ignorance of the system, which is ignorance of the truth, which is a path to more failure. In short, accountability is an unproductive concept born out of distrustful false beliefs about people. Discard it from your repertoire.